Monday, July 27, 2009

There's an interesting review of Andrew Roberts's new history of the Second World War, The Storm of War, in the Economist.

In brief, Mr Roberts argues that the war started when it did because Hitler was a Nazi, and that Germany lost it for the same reason.

The Nazi leader’s blunders started when he began to turn his anti- Semitic rhetoric into practice, driving many of Germany’s best brains into exile. The allies won because “our German scientists were better than their German scientists”, was the pithy summary of the war’s outcome by one of Churchill’s closest aides, Sir Ian Jacob.

Excellent German engineering and ruthless use of forced labour was not enough to make up for the drain of so many clever people into exile or concentration camps.

In other words, killing off the Jews lost Germany the war. Just wait for the Neo-Nazis to cotton on to this: now they have another reason to hate us!

As a side note, the reviewer (in the Economist, always anonymous) notes that the book is full of "startling facts". My favourite concerns Orde Wingate, the Christian British officer who became an ardent Zionist and played a central role training the Haganah troops. According to Roberts,

Orde Wingate was an ardent nudist who never bathed. (He scrubbed himself with a stiff brush, instead.)